


'tis bitter cold, and i am sick at heart

by serlingesque



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Epistolary, Friendship/Love, Gen, Ghosts, Horror, Implied/Referenced Character Death, It Ends Badly, M/M, Major Original Character(s), No Spoilers, Original Avatar Character(s) (The Magnus Archives) - Freeform, Other, POV Alternating, POV First Person, POV Multiple, POV Third Person, Poisoning, Surreal, TMA but make it Classical Literature, Why Did I Write This?, also corpses, because i am a nerd, generally morbid topics, or are they?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:15:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26132518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serlingesque/pseuds/serlingesque
Summary: A letter addressed to Horatio Evans Gutierrez, from somebody named 'Junior,' regarding... a ghost. And branches. And wine. And the cold, impending Autumn.Letter dated October 29, 1984.[this is a concept that includes no canonical TMA characters or plot, but instead imagines Horatio from Hamlet as an avatar of the Eye, haunted by the memory of his late friend, who is tragically consumed by various forces.]
Kudos: 2





	'tis bitter cold, and i am sick at heart

**Author's Note:**

> hi!! i'm serlingesque, greetings. i haven't really ever been active on ao3, and that's clear with my awful tagging, but i'm currently listening through season 4 of the Magnus Archives and honest to god i cannot get it out of my head. this isn't a genuine fanfic only because i'm not caught up with the series yet, but when i am i'm sure i'll start making full on fics, or at least reading 'em. i just had to manifest my love for this podcast somehow, since Jonny Sims' writing makes me go feral every time i hear it. so, uh,,, i wrote this little thing, based off Hamlet. if you think that's weird, it is. come on in and suffer with me :)

October 29, 1984

Dear Horatio,

I am writing this because I would really love, more than anything, to have an existential conversation with you. I know I go on these sort of nonsensical banters all the time with you, but please, in spite of what I’ve put you through over the years, hear this one out. It would also be lovely if you told me your thoughts on all this, in either a hypothetical or real sense. I’ll be honest, as of late it’s been near impossible to tell between what’s real and what isn’t. And that’s probably my own fault. 

I am getting ahead of myself. 

Do you remember the sighting we had? Back on the outskirts of Beacon, that town upstate we’d grown up in, where the wilderness was always so close? It was during that camping trip our families had embarked on. I am sure the memories are foggy for you, too. We were only teenagers, after all. 

It was a quiet night in the beginning. No weather problems predicted by any channels, but—and I still feel like this—I just could not trust the air. Not in the Autumn. That is precisely the point of it. It is the season of change. We both know change was never easy for me to handle, how the dying trees depressed me, how I mistrusted the greenery when they came back to life in March, as if their deaths still hung within their brightness. But, you sensed my dread in the temperate evening, and assured me we would be fine in nothing but our jackets. 

In many ways, that night was the time I realized just how lucky I am to have you as a friend. (And when I say lucky, I mean it in the most ubiquitous, earthly way possible. I mean that you are _phenomenal_ , Ray; you always have been.) Because you stuck with me and our plan to sneak out of our separate tents and into the night, while simultaneously not believing a single word I said. You never protested what we were doing—for a while, at least—but I could tell that you thought it ridiculous of me to suggest there was a ghost in the woods, and that we high-schoolers could hunt it down. To be honest, I don’t know how you feel by now, but at the time you firmly did not believe in ghosts. There was this smug expression on your face, as we ventured down that rocky, moss-covered path, away from the campgrounds, as if you knew that soon enough a rational explanation would emerge, and we would realize no spirit was—or ever would be—in our presence. 

Of course, this didn’t happen. 

I saw it before you did. 

You have recollected to me many times what you saw as I reacted, but no matter how many times you ask, no matter how much my heart pulverizes itself at your subtle pleas (which I do sense; you don’t fool me;) I just can’t describe it to you. Still. It won’t hurt to try. 

All the weather channels were wrong by the time we reached the spot, far from the campgrounds, just at the edge of the deeper forest. We linked hands and started doing whatever summoning ritual I had found in the local library books the previous night. The wind was howling. It tossed around your hair, and made me sway until I was nauseous. It was a wind colder, drier, and more unforgiving than I had ever experienced, and my young mind must have created a personality for it in the process of remembrance. It felt as if it were drawing me into whatever lay beyond the path, in the blackened mass of thin leafless tree branches, like veins, that stretched out. Looking into that darkness, I was filled with an inexplicable feeling of trench-deep dread. The chant slipped away from my lips, and all sound fell and disappeared. I felt the silence, with it a horrible intrigue, and a sense of duty I still can’t explain. 

It worked: the ghost appeared in front of us. 

Almost immediately after it came, it turned its back to us and began to stalk into the endless trees.

So, I went ahead, without you. 

You have told me, from your end, that you might as well have seen me walk off a cliff. That was how quickly I disappeared from view. That was the solemness that completely overtook me as I followed the dead man you still insist never existed. 

My argument? Hysteria either comes in one, or in masses. There was only the two of us that night, and neither of us were anywhere near hysterical. 

Funnily enough, I have no memory of what the ghost actually looked like. You’ve told me it didn’t look like a ghost at all, not even human, and I have replied that by saying this you’re still affirming you saw what you do not believe in. Even then, when I called out to you before turning my back, “There, I see it! Would you just believe me?” you called back, 

“Seeing isn’t always believing.” 

Your example was nightmares.

I mean, you do sort of have a point. I get stuck when I think on this suggestion, Ray, honestly. If nothing else I should emphasize to you this: if all of this has truly been a bad dream, a thing never seen but always believed, seen and never believed, then I have undoubtedly lost it and you should give up on me. 

Still. It looked a lot like a ghost to me. Whatever it actually looked like. 

I quickly reached a point where the entrance of the forest was no longer visible and there was nothing but darkness and a slight shape of path to follow. I could feel the ground’s turbulence beneath me, scratched and bruised myself with bristles, stones, and branches. I could see nothing but the otherworldly, mesmerizing, corpsesque form that led me. I focused on it. My heart was pounding, telling me perhaps this was a bad idea, a message my brain had not the time nor the energy to process. Instead, it clung to a profound silence that enraptured every corner of my surroundings. I could hear nothing stir around me, could not even hear myself, and it made my ears ring. 

At times, this faint shouting would half-penetrate the deafening silence. They were yours, I know this now. You were running far behind me, shouting for me to stop, but as you cried out, the ghost quickened its pace and started to fade into the vein-like branches. Reacting to this, I began to run. 

I ran with such an unknown desperateness. I stumbled through rocks and creeks and was bleeding all over, and I didn’t care. I profoundly did not care. Your calls drowned out in the silence once again. I felt myself fall and get up multiple times, felt the mud on my clothes, my shirt torn and my jacket damp, but heard none of it and felt no pain. Well, the pain part is half-true. Actually, everything in me had started to hurt dully, unfathomably, but it didn’t come from the falls and scratches, and whatever did come from those I did not pay attention to. 

Eventually, I stopped to catch my breath. I couldn’t see anything, but now the air felt more open around me, and I no longer felt branches in my way. I immediately collapsed, shaking with some mix of fear and utter exhaustion, and I felt moss, grass, and dew cushion the fall. 

Lying there, I heard somebody start to talk. I _think_ it was in a language I understand. That means it could have been English, Danish, or even Greek I would have been able to grasp at that time. I tried to stand up, to reply, but my limbs felt locked to the ground. I was face down in a clearing somewhere on the grass, dew caressing my face, my breathing shallow and my body paralyzed. The voice above me—the spirit, I assumed—talked over my grunts and questions and careless panic. Its voice was soft and emotionless, addressed me in an orderly way like a student, or a son. This did nothing to quiet the mounting terror in my chest. I didn’t know where you were. I didn’t know how to ask. I felt so unbearably alone, yet held a profound awareness that I wasn’t. 

In its words, it lifted me from the ground, my limp arms and legs dangling, and held its hollowed, pale face close to mine. It was making me an offer, Ray. A request. A _quid pro quo_ , if you will. And in return, a knowledge and sense which I cannot pass to you, but which stays with me to this day. 

Looking into the face of that ghost I felt a devouring terror, of course, but the longer I stared, the longer it spoke, it was replaced with a sense of tranquility. I felt an eternity in the minutes we spent, and that was what it would give me: eternity. Tranquility. Stillness. 

I was a child; my life was very turbulent. I wanted nothing more. 

It would make no sense that I ever opened my mouth in that place, in that suspension—my body still paralyzed and heavy as stone—but I must have said yes. I must have, and the fact that I did is becoming more clearly the reason behind everything that’s happened to us. (And I’m sorry. But we’ll get to that later.) It took my answer, and as suddenly as they had taken me, those clammy, calloused, substance-less hands let go of me and I hit my head hard on the ground. 

Pain shot through me; real, this time. 

For a while, I could do nothing but lie there. Despite everything that had just happened, my mind was strangely empty. I felt a tiredness, one in my bones. I feel this often, now. 

I hope you understand. 

I allowed myself a few minutes—or hours; honest to God I really couldn’t tell how much time had passed—however much, I suppose, that would allow me to sink into my exhaustion. For the coldness of the moss to sink, for my hands to stop twitching. In time the ring of the silence reached a point of familiarity, and began to fade. I could have fallen asleep there, into an uncomfortable, shadow-ridden, guilty sort of sleep. 

But just as my limbs relaxed, the world plunged into an awful noise. It was beating in the distance at first, but quickly became so loud that the sounds themselves were a putrid taste in my mouth, torturing my ears and temples alike. At first it merely sounded like chaos, a horrid sort of wrenching sound, but as I lay in it I realized it was the sound of _people_. Inconvenient sort of people, following social cues, screeching and chatting and loudly chewing their food. They were all drunk. They were all miserable. They were all in exactly the place they ought to be (whether that place be Heaven or Hell or some other place was completely beyond me). They were all content in their misery. Their noise filled the air, their presence inevitable and an insult to my own. 

My exhausted hands balled into fists, and slowly I hoisted myself to a kneeling position. The noise did not leave as I lifted my torso and my hair hung slightly below me, facing the imprint I had made on the moss. I had to move sparingly, as the noise was pressing on me, squeezing my skull and chest. I could think of nothing else. Perhaps I was drunk, too. Maybe none of this was actually happening, and I’d passed out full of LSD at some party and driven myself into much worse of a state than I was prepared for. Maybe something had happened, someone had died, and at the post-funeral dinner I’d driven myself into a grief so deep it caused me to imagine things. Or maybe I was at a wedding, since those things always make me even more miserable. Wish there was a reason why they do. I feel like it’s somehow wrong to say, but whenever I attend one I feel as though I’d been placed in a battlefield unarmed. A celebration made for people I barely know, yet it’s _me_ behind the menagerie glass, asked all sorts of questions by dead eyes and barely-living cousins with young faces. Everybody thinks I hate people, but I don’t, you know that. I just forget the rhythm sometimes. Does that make sense? There’s a beat whose command everybody follows without question, of whose commandments everybody knows, but I can never make sense of it or find it in myself to imitate it, to mirror the dead eyes and mouths. 

Then I thought, _Perhaps it was you who died_. 

As the thought struck me, I started choking on air, and mouth hanging open I finally forced myself to sit up and face the noise. But by then, everything stopped, and the silence returned. 

When I got up, I expected those dark and twisting woods to still be there. Instead, my body buckled under a sudden blinding light that drilled burning holes in my vision. I shielded myself. After blinking a few times, things cleared up, and I realized the light was coming from a large chandelier hanging above me. It was gigantic, casting wonderful yellow rays of light all around it. The forest was well forgotten. Somehow, I’d ended up in some sort of hallway that was as wide as a public school gymnasium. The tiles below me shone gold and white, following and circling a pattern of grand pillars, and between them windows of stained glass caused a plethora of colors to dance in the air. 

I was beginning to believe the LSD story. 

At first, I marveled at the complete stillness that everything managed to yet again maintain. It took a few seconds to realize that the noise which a few minutes ago covered every crevice of my senses hadn’t disappeared. It just… moved, somehow. Gradually, I heard it again, those disgusting people living their lives. But they were muffled, distant. It would make sense that if this hallway were somewhere indoors, they were all probably outside. 

Whoever’s palace this was, whatever dream I had created for myself, I reasoned I couldn’t just stand in there swaying in the middle of it. I needed to walk further. I can’t explain why this need came to me. Maybe because of my promise, the gift I’d been given. I had to walk deeper into it. 

My steps echoed through the grand shape of that palace, which curved into a domelike ceiling. The hall’s light came entirely from the chandelier, and as I passed it by, the hall grew dim, living off nothing but the sunlight filtering through the colored glass. When I realized that just before the sky had been pitch black, and either I was passed out on that moss for hours or the sun had just miraculously appeared, I rushed to the windows and squinted through them, trying to find out where I was. It was definitely sunny, not a cloud in the sky. I saw hills of green grass, foliage peeking out in the distance. The grasses a lush green, the trees beginning to yellow and die off. I was still in the forest, I think, though none of it was recognizable. 

I backed from the window and approached the next one over, a few feet away. I pressed my face against it. It looked like some type of courtyard, or a property in a meadow, at once pampered and wild. In the distance, nearer to the trees, the people laughed and harmonized. Their noise came from an area behind a hill, where tips of multiple gazebos, picnic tables, and floral decorations poked out. They all looked somehow twisted, those creaking wooden structures peeking through the hills, creaking with such a harsh pitch I swore it was drunk and laughing, too. I looked long and hard at the gathering, hearing their voices reach above the hilltops, all coming from those laughing tables and roofs, but saw nobody there. The chattering blended together, inaudible words in a language I was certain I understood. But no one was there. And no one was here, no one but me. 

I turned again to the direction I’d been walking. Everything seemed to be moving slower, now. My steps. My heartbeat. My thoughts. The stillness still there, sinking. I kept thinking back to the ghost I had followed, although my memory of it was already starting to fade and convolute. What I promised it. What did I promise it? What was it that it would give me in return, and why did I feel such an obligation to have it, why did I want it so badly? Was it peace? Pride? Death? A good night’s sleep, for God’s sake? 

To this day, I don’t know for sure. 

But I’m starting to get a hunch. 

My steps echoed in their muffled way. I was approaching an entrance to some or other room, and my stare grew glassy, focusing on nothing but it. Nothing but it and my own self, funnily enough, and just how little the two fit together. Everything around me, bright and colorful, made stark contrast with my dirtied combat boots, leaving trails on the golden floor, with my mud and leaves, my ripped trousers, ruined shirt, black jacket with its collar half-up and scratching lightly against my neck. Dark colors. Muddled and faded and alone. 

The more these differences presented themselves to me, the darker and smaller my presence became, and a ubiquitous phase of dread ran through me. I was struck by every feeling of guilt and alienation I’d ever had in my childhood at once, every time my mind hot-wired and concluded not only did I not belong where I stood, but standing there any longer would surely kill me. Messages like these overlapped themselves, over-thoughts in multiple languages, all of which I understood clear as day. 

The aloneness was the worst of them. I guess I should confess this now. Being alone terrifies me. To me, thinking of it is no different—and sometimes worse—than imagining death. Not just physical death, but the death of my memory. The sheer idea that I would disappear long before death came for me. That I would become silent, sullen, small, having barely a dent in the memory of everyone I cared for. The thought that this would not change if I fought my fate. That this would not change if I stopped caring for everyone. 

Call it another bout of overthinking; you’re free to. It could easily have been. You are the type to have doubts about these things, I know. I will never doubt your doubts, my love; after all, these are my own interpretations as much as yours are your own. I thought of your doubts as these cries of fate rose in that bright corridor, in my dark self. I thought of you, and you comforted me. 

But in any case, the idea of my fate became so tangible, so freezing solid, so impenetrable in my mind as I kept stalking through that strange place. At that point I was able to rule out the idea that I already _was_ dead, or that you were: this was no Heaven, no Hell, no Purgatory. The stillness, as it lingered, didn’t comment on any current condition we were in. It felt more like a warning. 

I reached the end of the hallway. What met me seemed almost jagged, sudden, out of place. It was a door—small, wooden, modern, unlike everything else. I felt rather choked by its presence, to the point of repulsion. I wanted to turn back, or walk in circles, do anything that would somehow delay walking through that entrance and meeting whatever was behind it. 

Eventually, though, I pushed forward, gnashing my teeth, my shoulders trembling. 

The door opened with a silent, rattling creak. 

I still get a little sick when I remember what I saw. It sends me spiralling into trails of thought, every time. I’ll try to keep it together, for your sake and mine. 

There were bodies. Ten bodies, into twenty bodies, into numbers I can’t bear to keep up with. They were lying and sitting and reclining and kneeling with straight backs, lying with their faces in the ground and each other, in piles all over a grand ballroom, or maybe it was a courtroom. The courtroom, like where I’d been before, was clad in golden piers, chandeliers, and every color imaginable. And all the bodies, despite this, seemed dim and muddied, as if all the color had been sucked from them. They absorbed all the light in the room. They dragged the room down. Diluted, somehow, with a purplish sheen. Looking at any singular body for too long was like static in the head. But I could look at them long enough to see their faces, their forms, and to my utter horror, know them. They were my classmates, partners, strangers I passed on the street, waitresses at the local diner, all with dry, paled, frozen expressions. The same look that had adorned the ghost. 

I, too, was frozen. Logic begged me to scream, to run, call for help, do anything a normal person would do, but every urge stopped at the edge of my mind and held no chance against that rising deterministic dread, one that planted my feet here, one coupled with terror. I was not alone, but I certainly felt it. The aloneness crushed me. 

_Were these the same people as the ones I’d heard outside?_ I wondered. It was likely. But it didn’t explain how they all died so fast, showed no signs of injury or anything to cause their deaths, simultaneously looking like they’d all gathered there just to collapse where they were, and like they’d been dead for years, carefully preserved, glossy marble statues. 

They all seemed so uncannily _gone_ that I wouldn't dare think they could ever move, but I kept my eyes on them, observing, forcing my stare into them until I felt physically ill. 

I almost yelled out in shock when I heard glass shatter behind me. It was a small sound, but its suddenness shook me. I spun around and immediately doubled back in seeing a woman, standing and staring at me. I sucked in my breath. I recognized her instantly as my mother, and she was just as gone as the rest of them. There was blood on her chin. She’d dropped that glass on the ground, and as soon as we locked eyes—an icy shiver rushing through me—her pupils met the sky and she toppled to the ground. I can’t describe how harrowing it was to hear the weight of her make contact with that courtroom floor. 

As silence rose again, I crouched down to approach her, a tender guilt washing through my veins. My eyes never broke with my mother; it hurt that it was her, and hurt even more that she looked so wrong, so empty, that the plethora of empty stares my actual mother has given me since then mean nothing in comparison. My eyes then slipped to the broken glass at the edge of my vision. The broken pieces scattered over a puddle of red wine. It was not blood on my mother’s chin. It was wine. 

It was around that time that your shouts finally got to me. Suddenly, I was on the grass again, even dirtier and more sore than I remembered myself to be, being shaken and held by you. You shook pretty violently yourself—not only from the cold, I imagine—and when you saw me come to, your entire form melted somewhat in relief. You helped me up. You even offered to carry me, though I refused, and we headed out of the clearing toward a sputtering car and a park ranger, and our families. My mother was there, same as she always has been. We later learned we were found after five in the morning. We’d been gone nearly six hours. 

We didn’t talk about that night for years. For it to resurface in our relationship, it took an exhausted late-night excursion to celebrate the end of freshman year finals. By then, we both created our own beliefs and interpretations explaining just what it all meant, and as you know now, they’re quite different. I feel awful for not going in real detail about my experience until now. 

There wasn’t a reason for me not to tell you, other than I knew you didn’t believe in ghosts. I’ve always respected that, always acknowledged the evidence you have offered that supports there having been no ghost at all. But I do, Ray. I believe it so profusely that sometimes I think it’s killing me. And I spent so long convincing myself that if I just pretended it never happened, that it was not there, it would all disappear, and I would not be drawn to the stillness any longer. 

Ray, my mother was poisoned. A couple days ago, with a glass of red wine, from a bottle that’d been saved in our basement since the year we went camping. I am sitting next to her in a hospital in Harlem as I write this. I haven’t told anyone else, so if you see any of my friends, don’t mention this to them. I can’t get it out of my head that it’s my fault. That I willed it, fated it, somehow. That I have expected this to happen, ever since that very night. I mean, it isn’t like she hasn’t drunk any red wine between then and now—she’s drunk a _lot_ of wine, in fact, and my throat clogged with terror every night she did, at least, every night I did not hate her. On the nights I did, the terror became muffled with a stimulating rush of goosebumps all over me, a grounding sensation as comforting and uncaring as snowfall. If I weren’t a coward, I would call it satisfaction. 

Naturally, it was one of those nights when she gave me a glass. We clinked them and we drank, together. Then I sat motionless, feeling nothing if not a little chilly, when she fell to the ground. 

She is alive now, but she won’t be for long. My mother is going to end soon. It’s all my fault. I mean, our relationship was never that wonderful, but hating her half the time doesn’t mean I’m prepared to live if she isn’t. And if she’ll cease to be soon, then the same is true for everyone else in that courtroom. Everyone I knew and know. Everyone in that pile, all wintry and faded, all connected back to me. It’s not like the dreaded mortality of every human being in existence is much of a surprise to anyone, but these bodies won’t have _natural_ deaths. I don’t know how I know this, but I do. I saw the only family I have in that room. And our friends, Ray. They’ll all be gone soon. We all signed up for a fixed fate as soon as I agreed to that dreaded ghost’s request. Everyone dies, Ray, but these people… they’re special. 

I’m special. 

I feel like I have known this for a long time. At times, I’ve felt like my entire presence was chained to the undeniable end of it. I’ve waited all these years, pretending not to know, not to have the obligation, ignoring the fact that in that palace room I saw my own tragedy, saw everything I would take. I’ve tried everything to evade it, to avoid taking them and thus leaving myself alone. But yesterday morning, I opened the minifridge in my hotel room, and the cool shelves inside were covered in twisting black branches like veins. If Autumn is the season of change, then the Autumn is hungry, Ray. And I can’t wait it out any longer. 

This letter is, if anything else, a request for forgiveness. You can deny it if you want to. You’ve been so good to me that I don’t deserve you, and you can turn away at any point, especially now. But I’d rather you try and see my reasoning, and I’d rather you tell me that everything is going to be okay. Even if I don’t believe that, if you don’t believe that, even if you think none of this is real as it is. I just want things to be okay. But I know nothing, except that I have this sense of duty in me, that I have this dread, that I am scared, and that the Autumn will stop at nothing. 

This story is yours. Do with it as you please and as you decide. 

Yours indefinitely, 

Junior

——

Every time he glanced at his ink-stained hands, that shiny silver ring glimmered a greeting, a soft and agonizing reminder. Even now, Horatio could see it gleaming underneath the yellowed paper of the letter. 

When it had originally been sent, it didn't arrive in time. Not for at least a week and a half. By the time he had sped to Harlem on a Greyhound bus, by the time he had reached that motel room with shaking hands and racing eyes, the branching veins had already beaten him to it. 

After that, his life fell to pieces. With his Prince left everything that filled him, left routine, feeling, sanity. The letter was useless now, leaving nothing but the ring that’d been sent with it, the wine and broken wine glass, the murky coal veins that had been festering untouched for years, the doors begging behind them. 

When Horatio looked at his veins, he was consumed by disbelief. He couldn’t imagine himself having blood anymore, having a heartbeat, unless one counted the subtle pulse of words, of stories trailing round him. 

When Horatio looked at bottles of wine, at their deep pink and red hues, he never believed it. He saw the gullible, round face of his Prince, turning in intrigue at the face of his father, the face of the End. He saw his dirtied black fingernails and sagging skin under his dim eyes. He heard his words, but more so, the cry of terror that had hid so expertly beneath them. If only he could have seen it then. 

When Horatio looked at his Prince’s ring, the message was cold, simple: _I am yours, indefinitely_. 

When Horatio heard the doors creaking, he did not turn around to see. 

When Horatio looked at wine glasses, their beauty softened him, and he saw through the rounded lens late nights, study nights, half-drunk and adventurous nights with his Prince’s slender hands gesticulating and his own vast Classical texts, and he saw that little stone of peace he granted his Prince whenever they were together, heard every message of love his Prince never said. 

When Horatio looked at broken wine glasses, there came nothing but the sounds of whispers, of groans. It followed with an oppressive golden light, a room vast and empty, his own agonized screams blinking back at him. 

When Horatio looked in the mirror, the hollow face of his Prince peered expectantly behind him. His shoulders and forearms screamed, aching in their bareness. All that was death and madness became a grieving passion and love in his hands, forged by the years into a need, a hunger. A writhing untold story. 

When Horatio closed his eyes, they only kept opening. 


End file.
